Abstract: Recent years have seen an impressive increase in web-based research, of which we review and discuss two main types. First, researchers can create online versions of traditional questionnaires. Using the internet in this way usually does not compromise the psychometric properties of such measures, and participants are typically not less representative of the general population than those of traditional studies. Technical guidelines are provided to set up such studies, and thorny issues such as participants' anonymity are discussed. We will also discuss issues regarding the assessment of minors and the repeated assessment of participants to assess developmental changes via the web. Second, the internet has changed the way people interact with each other. The study of the psychosocial consequences of this development is called cyberpsychology. We review emerging findings from this young discipline, with a focus on developmentally-relevant implications such as the use of the internet by adolescents to disclose personal information.

Abstract: This article examines the quality of maternal mind-mindedness among adult and adolescent mothers, using an assessment of the appropriateness and emotional valence of maternal mind-related comments while interacting with their infants. Twenty-nine adult mothers and 69 adolescent mothers participated in two assessments with their 18-month-old infants. Results showed that adult mothers used more mind-related comments when interacting with their child, especially comments referring to infant mental states. Adult mothers also used more appropriate and positive mind-related comments. Home observations and strange situation assessments revealed that two dimensions of mind-mindedness were associated with maternal sensitivity and three with infant attachment in adult mothers, whereas only one dimension was associated with maternal sensitivity in adolescent mothers.

Abstract: The current study examined peer victimization trajectories for 1528 children from third to fifth grade and the association of those trajectories to children's positive and negative affect. On average, victimization was low to moderate and remained stable (self-report) or increased (peer-reports). In addition, five distinct trajectories were identified based on self-report: Low, Moderate, Increasing, Decreasing, and Chronic. Peer-reported victimization did not reveal distinct trajectories. Although the level of victimization was related to concurrent negative affect (self- and peer-reported victimization) and to positive affect (self-report victimization only), relations between change in victimization and change in affect were less consistent. Also, a chronic victimization trajectory was associated with greatest affective distress and a decreasing trajectory was associated with partial, but not full, recovery in terms of affect. Results largely support a chronic model of victimization's effects in which victimization has compounding and enduring effects on adjustment. Intervention implications include the importance of including selective interventions for highly victimized youth with universal anti-bullying programs, assessing both past and current victimization, and including indicators of adjustment when evaluating anti-bullying interventions.

Abstract: The present study used the German Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) to assess attitudes toward younger and older adults in a heterogeneous sample of n = 151 younger and n = 143 older adults. The questionnaire was administered in two versions, one referring to the evaluation of younger adults, the other to the evaluation of older adults. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis replicated the four-factor solution reported in the literature. Younger compared to older adults were rated as higher in terms of instrumentality (i.e., more active, adaptive to change) and integrity (i.e., more personally satisfied, at peace with oneself), whereas older adults were described as more autonomous and self-sufficient than younger adults. Younger participants reported more negative attitudes toward younger and older adults in some of the factors than did older participants. Structural equation modeling furthermore showed that attitudes correlated with personality characteristics and positive and negative affect, in t...

Abstract: This study examined how children’s aggression and prosocial behavior are related to the preference and popularity of their best friends. Participants were 1,953 fourth-graders (52.2% boys). Measures included peer nominations of friendship, peer status, overt and relational aggression, and prosocial behavior. A total of 334 reciprocal same-sex best friend dyads were identified. The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (Kashy & Kenny, 1999) showed that best friends’ peer status significantly predicted children’s behavior. For boys, best friends’ preference was negatively associated with overt aggression, while best friends’ popularity was positively associated with overt aggression. For girls, best friends’ popularity was positively related to both relational aggression and prosocial behavior. The model also revealed high similarity between friends in both preference and popularity. This study highlighted the distinction between two dimensions of peer status in the study of friendship and peer influence in middle childhood. It also demonstrated how individual, dyad, and group characteristics can be integrated in the study of children’s social relationships.

Abstract: This study followed a school-based sample (N = 920) to explore how trajectories of depressive symptoms and expressed anger from age 18 to 25, along with important life transitions, predicted life and career satisfaction at age 32. A two-group (women and men) bivariate growth model revealed that higher depressive symptoms at age 18 predicted lower life satisfaction in men and women, and lower career satisfaction in women. Slower declines across emerging adulthood in women’s depressive symptoms predicted lower life satisfaction, but slower declines in women’s expressed anger predicted higher career satisfaction. Marital and employment-related transitions were differentially related to men’s and women’s life and career satisfaction. Paths to success in young adulthood are diverse and gendered.

Abstract: The aim of this study was to explore child and adolescent personality in the Russian culture, addressing gender and age differences, and to examine personality and family effects on children’s Internalizing and Externalizing problems. Parents of 1,640 Russian children aged 3—18 years completed the Inventory of Child Individual Differences measuring personality, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire measuring problem behavior, and reported about family background. Girls scored higher than boys on the Conscientiousness domain and on the Intelligent and Considerate scales, but lower on Activity. In younger children, Extraversion was higher; in older children, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Shyness were higher; Distractibility was highest in early adolescence. The gender and age differences were small. Personality explained about 30% of variance in children’s Internalizing problems, and 50% in Externalizing problems; family factors contributed less than 4%. Internalizing Problems were linked to higher Neuroticism and lower Extraversion; Externalizing Problems were linked to higher Extraversion, lower Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. For both types of problems, harsh parenting was a risk factor, while SES and family cohesion were associated with lower problem levels. Models linking personality with children’s problem behavior were similar in preschool, middle childhood, early and late adolescence.

Abstract: The current paper explores the salience and impact of ethnic and national identities for immigrants that are negotiating more than two cultures. Specifically, we were interested in the ways in which Jewish immigrant adolescents from the former Soviet Union integrate their Russian, Jewish, and American identities, and to what extent identification with these three cultures predicts adaptation to varied life domains. In order to examine whether being Jewish has an impact on salience and predictive value of Russian and American identities, a sample of Jewish adolescents (n = 100) was compared with a sample of non-Jewish (n = 113) adolescent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The study suggests that Jewish and non-Jewish adolescent immigrants differ in levels of Russian and American identity. Further, using structural equation modeling a bicultural model for Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents was tested. The results suggest that these two groups do not differ with respect to how Russian and American iden...

Abstract: Immigration presents both challenges and opportunities that affect students’ academic achievement. Over the course of five years, varying academic trajectories were identified for recent immigrant students from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. Latent class growth curve analysis revealed that although some students performed at high or improving levels over time, others showed diminishing performance. Multinomial logistic regressions identified significant group differences in academic trajectories, particularly between the high-achieving youth and the other groups. Consistent with ecological systems theory, school characteristics (a: school segregation rate; b: school poverty rate; and c: student perceptions of school violence), family characteristics (a-separation from mother and father; b-maternal education; and c-paternal employment), and individual characteristics (a-academic English proficiency; b-academic engagement; c-psychological symptoms; d-gender) were associat...

Abstract: This study examined the effects of the accumulation of family risk factors on children’s literacy skills, both in preschool and in first grade. Children’s (N = 106) vocabulary, conventions of print, phonological awareness, knowledge of letters, reading decoding, and reading comprehension were assessed. Family risk factors, consisting of household composition, years of maternal education, job situation of the mother, and income level of the family, were combined to create a cumulative risk index. Canonical correlation and multiple regression analyses were performed. Results revealed the negative impact of cumulative risk index on both the preschool and first-grade literacy skills. In addition, the number of risk factors present in the family context negatively predicted the majority of the firstgrade literacy skills, after taking preschool skills into account. The results provide further evidence of the negative impact of the accumulation of family risks on child literacy development and call attention to ...

Abstract: The emotional responses to achievement contexts of 149 preschool children from three cultural groups were observed. The children were Japanese (N=32), African American (N=63) and White American of mixed European ancestry (N=54). The results showed that Japanese children differed from American children in expressing less shame, pride, and sadness, but more of both exposure and evaluative embarrassment. African American and White American children did not differ from one another. American children however showed more evaluative as opposed to exposure embarrassment. This finding supports the idea that success and failure are interpreted differently by Japanese children during the preschool years. The low amount of sadness and shame expression, and the limited range of number of different expressions observed in the Japanese children agree with the general finding that East Asian infants and young children differ from Western infants and children primarily in the display of negative expressions. These results demonstrate that cultural differences, whether due to temperament or direct socialization of cultural values, influence how children respond to achievement situations.

Abstract: This study compared the romantic involvements of Canadian and Chinese adolescents as well as linkages with friend and parental relationships. Participants were 496 Chinese adolescents and 395 Canad...

Abstract: This study employs an intra-national and cross-national, prospective, and longitudinal design to examine age, gender, region, and country variation in group mean-level continuity and individual-differences stability of emotional availability in child—mother dyads. Altogether, 220 Argentine, Italian, and US American metropolitan and rural residence mothers and their daughters and sons were observed at home when children were five and 20 months of age. Similar patterns of continuity and discontinuity of emotional availability from five to 20 months were observed across regions and countries, but not between genders. Stability of emotional availability from five to 20 months was moderate and similar across genders, regions, and countries. Universal and gender-specific developmental processes in child—mother emotional availability as revealed in intra-national and cross-national study are discussed.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was (1) to evaluate psychometric properties that assess forms of aggression (i.e., relational and physical aggression) across cultures (i.e., Japan and the United States) and (2) to investigate the role of culture in the associations between forms of aggression and social-psychological adjustment problems such as depressive symptoms and delinquency. Participants consisted of 296 fourth-graders (197 Japanese and 99 US children). It was hypothesized that relative to US children, relational aggression would be more strongly associated with depressive symptoms for Japanese children. Findings supported our hypothesis, suggesting that Japanese children may be more vulnerable to negative interpersonal experiences, including relational aggression.

Abstract: Temperamentally exuberant children may be at risk for emotion regulation problems, but this may also depend on their capacity for effortful control. To examine this issue, we assessed 72 typically-developing 3- to 5-year-olds. Child exuberance, effortful control, and emotion regulation were assessed via maternal report and observations of child behavior. Emotion regulation problems were elevated among children showing high exuberance and among children showing low effortful control. However, during a disappointing task, children with high exuberance showed stable, elevated levels of organized emotion regulation regardless of effortful control; for children with low exuberance, only those who also showed high effortful control showed comparable levels of organized emotion regulation. Implications for understanding risk and resilience associated with exuberance are discussed.

Abstract: This study compared rates of dating aggression among 16-year-old adolescents in Canada and Italy, as well as differential associations with dyadic risk factors. 664 Canadians (297 boys, 367 girls) and 578 Italians (315 boys, 263 girls) indicated the frequency of physical aggression towards a romantic partner. They also rated the level of conflict and power imbalance in their romantic relationship. The results revealed comparable rates of physical dating aggression in the two countries for both boys and girls. Dyadic risk factors were also significant, with levels of conflict associated with dating aggression in both countries, and power imbalance uniquely linked in Italy. Overall, the results point to dating aggression as a global problem among youth.

Abstract: This study addresses the longitudinal relationships between three kinds of moral cognitions – self-serving cognitive distortions, moral judgment, perception of community – and antisocial behavior in young adolescents. Aims were to gain insight in direct and indirect relationships, stability, and causality. The sample included 724 students (M age 1/4 14.52, SD 1/4.67) from prevocational secondary schools in the Netherlands. Both self reports and teacher reports were filled out twice, with a time-interval of four months. Students exhibited high rates of aggression, vandalism, and stealing, indicating that they form an at-risk group for antisocial behavior. Positive associations were found between self-serving cognitive distortions and antisocial behavior and between moral judgment and perception of community, while negative associations were found between perception of community and both self-serving cognitive distortions and antisocial behavior. Longitudinal structural equation models established a moderate to high stability of the moral cognitions and antisocial behavior, and indi¬cated that self-reported antisocial behavior primarily preceded self-serving cognitive distortions. Although moderation by sex and ethnicity was established, differences between the groups appeared to be modest. The consequences of these findings for prevention and treatment of antisocial behavior are discussed.

Abstract: Infants responses to typical and scrambled human body shapes were assessed in relation to the realism of the human body stimuli presented. In four separate experiments, infants were familiarized to typical human bodies and then shown a series of scrambled human bodies on the test. Looking behaviour was assessed in response to a range of different human body stimulus types including real people, mannequins, dolls and large human body photographs. Results were compared with previous experiments showing that when presented with small drawings, photographs or dolls, infants demonstrate knowledge about the whole human body shape only after their first birthday (Slaughter & Heron, 2004). In the current study, recognition of the typical human body shape was evident as early as 9 months of age when the stimuli were real humans, and infants responses to the various types of representations were linked to the realism of the portrayal. This pattern of findings indicates that even simple visual responses are not independent of the nature of the stimuli used to elicit them. © 2010 The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development.

Abstract: To examine the ontogeny of emotion—attention interactions, we investigated whether infants exhibit adult-like biases in automatic and voluntary attentional processes towards fearful facial expressions. Heart rate and saccadic eye movements were measured from 7-month-old infants (n = 42) while viewing non-face control stimuli, and neutral, happy, and fearful facial expressions flanked after 1000 ms by a peripheral distractor. Relative to neutral and happy expressions, fearful expressions resulted in a greater cardiac deceleration response during the first 1000 ms of face-viewing and in a relatively long-lasting suppression of face-to-distractor saccades. The results suggest that the neural architecture for the integration of emotional significance with automatic attentional orienting as well as more voluntary attentional prioritization processes is present early in life.

Abstract: This study investigated a novel approach to obtaining data on parent and infant emotion during the Face-to-Face/Still-Face paradigm, and examined these data in light of previous findings regarding early autism risk. One-hundred and eighty eight non-expert students rated 38 parents and infant siblings of children who did (20) or did not (18) have autism spectrum disorders. Ratings averaged across 10 non-experts exhibited high concordance with expert facial-action codes for infant emotion, and 20 non-experts were required for reliable parent ratings. Findings replicated the well-established still-face effect and identified subtle risk associations consonant with results from previous investigations. The unique information offered by intuitive non-expert ratings is discussed as an alternative to complex and costly behavioral coding systems.

Abstract: We often have a feeling that we know ourselves much better than others know us, coupled with a feeling that our minds are not transparent to other people. In this article we begin to explore cultural variations in the development of this feeling. Children in Britain and Japan aged 7, 9 and 11 years judged how well they and how well their parent/teacher knew about aspects of the child’s mind (e.g., dreams, feeling sick, feeling hungry). Compared with British children, Japanese children credited adults with relatively large amounts of knowledge about themselves and this was most notable in the youngest group. Differences in patterns of judgements between the two nations could arise from differences in the cultural influences on the rate of development.

Abstract: The aim of this three-wave cross-lagged longitudinal study was to examine the prospective relationships between women’s goal-related spousal support and their relationship satisfaction during the transition to parenthood. Two-hundred and forty-six Finnish women who were either married or cohabited (45% primiparous; 55% multiparous) filled in questionnaires on personal projects (Little, 1983) and related spousal support, relationship satisfaction (Spanier, 1976), and background data three times: in their early pregnancy; one month before childbirth; and three months after childbirth. Among the primiparous women the results showed a cumulative cycle of goal-related spousal support and relationship satisfaction: goal-related spousal support in early pregnancy predicted higher relationship satisfaction just before childbirth, and, vice versa, relationship satisfaction in early pregnancy predicted higher goal-related spousal support just before childbirth. In turn, among the multiparous women only relationship...

Abstract: We examined self-descriptions of children of Somali refugee families in Australian primary schools, focusing on how children’s school-related skills and needs relate to the interpretive frames of mainstream and ethnic cultures. Three groups of Grade 5 and 6 children (Somali, Disadvantaged, Advantaged) made choices among school-related skills, and rated feelings and needs for the transition to high school. Findings indicate a general goodness of fit between emphases of the mainstream culture and Somali children’s choices (sport, maths), while reflecting some values of their ethnic interpretive frames (rejecting art, music). Gender stereotypic differences did not interact with culture. Children’s computer-based choices provide a basis for bringing together studies of development and acculturation, and for differentiating between refugee status and socio-economic disadvantage.

Abstract: This study estimates the causal effects of six corrective actions for children's problem behaviors, comparing four types of longitudinal analyses that correct for pre-existing differences in a cohort of 1,464 4- and 5-year-olds from Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) data. Analyses of residualized gain scores found apparently detrimental effects of all corrective actions by parents and professionals on subsequent antisocial behavior and hyperactivity. In contrast, analyses of simple gain scores found only apparently beneficial effects. Temporally reversed analyses yielded the same pattern of results, consistent with selection biases and regression artifacts, not with unidirectional causal effects. The findings were similar for corrective actions by professionals (e.g., Ritalin, psychotherapy) and by parents (physical and nonphysical punishment, scolding/yelling, “hostile-ineffective” parenting). Longitudinal analyses should check for similar artifacts by implementing tempo...

Abstract: Although cultural and subcultural differences during the transition to adulthood have been examined, important factors like rural/urban upbringing and gender differences among Canadian emerging adults have been neglected. The present study explored developmentally significant tasks including criteria for adulthood, beliefs about religiosity, and risk-taking behaviors among 287 male and female Canadian emerging adults from rural and urban backgrounds. Results revealed that compared to their urban counterparts, rural emerging adults were more likely to place importance on role and biological transitions as criteria for achieving adulthood, and engaged in more risk-taking behaviors (excluding smoking). Female emerging adults were more likely to believe in the importance of role transition, norm compliance, and family capacities compared to males, and were more likely to smoke. In contrast, males were more likely than females to espouse the importance of biological transitions and engage in non-smoking risk behaviors. These findings were interpreted in light of sociocultural and gender socialization differences among emerging adults from rural and urban upbringings.

Abstract: We investigated romantic relationships in a sample of 380 adolescents who formed 190 heterosexual couples (mean age: females 17 years; males 18 years): 173 intra-ethnic (German) couples and 17 inter-ethnic couples. Factor analyses revealed two types of love experiences: (a) experiences of attraction and a passionate focus on the partner (passionate love) and (b) experiences of affiliation (companionate love). No differences were found between intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic couples in romantic experiences, self-esteem, and conflict resolution skills. Adolescents in intra-ethnic couples had more close relations with parents than adolescents in inter-ethnic couples. Actor—Partner Interdependence Models (APIMs) showed that companionate love was indirectly predicted by the quality of attachment towards parents; this relationship was mediated by self-esteem and conflict resolution skills. Whereas the quality of girlfriends’ attachment to the father (not to the mother) predicted conflict resolution skills in roma...

Abstract: Social relations of second grade students (247 boys, 290 girls) were examined in rural elementary classrooms. Cluster analysis of teacher ratings was used to identify interpersonal competence configurations including perceived unpopular-aggressive (i.e., Troubled ) and perceived popular-aggressive (i.e., Tough) subtypes for both boys and girls. Troubled children tended to have rejected status and were more likely to be either socially isolated or members of peer groups that did not contain popular classmates. Tough children were perceived by peers as being socially prominent (i.e., popular, cool, leaders) and they tended to associate with perceived popular peers. Tough boys had elevated levels of rejected or controversial sociometric status while Tough girls were distributed at expected levels across sociometric status classifications. The implications for intervention are discussed.

Abstract: Three studies were conducted to determine whether 7- and 9-month-old infants generalize face identity to a novel pose of the same face when only internal face sections with and without an emotional...